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Saturday, November 17, 2012

SFFS: Snippet #3 from Atomic Zion

Atomic Zion

DESCRIPTION:
I've skipped ahead a couple of pages in the first chapter for this snippet from my SF Thriller, Atomic Zion, which is in its final revisions. The book was influenced by my time as the Educational Marketing Director at Frank Lloyd Wright's House on Kentuck Knob and by reading stories from Michael Crichton, Robert Ludlum, James Rollins, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Back Cover Blurb...

On the night of his 90th birthday, a former Wright Apprentice is thrown from the fifth floor of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The only clue to clear his grandson of the murder is a note written in Navajo code which warns "The Bear has awakened."

These four words throw Nick Vanko into the middle of a decades old international cover-up where Wright Apprentices encoded WWII-era secrets about genetic experimentation into their blueprints. In order to stop a being who isn't quite human from unleashing a biological weapon upon the U.S., Nick must find Broadacre City, the fabled utopia designed by Wright, but supposedly never built. Searching by his side are an old Navajo CodeTalker, a woman who sees emotions as colors, and a Mossad agent who is really working for the Russian mafia. But can Vanko trust any of them?
--SNIPPET #1SNIPPET #2
--SNIPPET #3:

Skovajsa believed he could be like the lieutenant...one day. But today he remained frightened Jakub, his mind betraying him with its paranoia.

Was someone waiting for them? Their approach had been camouflaged by pine forests for the past two kilometers, and the landscape was such that they could see out of the forest to the rocky outcrop without being noticed in the trees' shadows. They would be most exposed for the hundred meters between the forest's edge and the cave entrance.

The lieutenant put up a hand to halt the group before the sun's rays could fall upon them. Out came the binoculars.

Minutes passed.

He gave hand signals telling Skovajsa's line to get low and move forward. The rest would cover them from the trees.
--
Find other wonderful snippets at Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday!

I went back to reread the first two snippets - yours is a good example of a sequence that really works far better with the full body of the text, rather than just 10 sentences. Slow-building tension and unease, and a strong sense that something is going to happen. Really good sequence.

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